Digital Commons Network^™

Making A Case For New Directions In English Language Teaching Research At An Omani University: A Critical Qualitative Content Analysis Report, Ali S. M. Al-Issa

The Qualitative Report

Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) has been the sole English Language Teaching (ELT) research enterprise in the Sultanate of Oman through the Master of Education (M.Ed.) in Curriculum and Methods of Teaching English degree program it launched in the early 1990s. Eighty-two theses have been completed so far about topics pertinent to ELT in the Sultanate of Oman. However, a review of those theses has shown that the discussion of these topics lacks a critical dimension that can advance Omani ELT at the micro and macro levels. This critical qualitative study, therefore, sets out to make a case for new directions …

Monitoring The Writing Progress Of English Learners In The Secondary Setting, Susan C. Ellis

School of Education and Leadership Student Capstone Theses and Dissertations

This capstone is a literature review that centers on two research questions: what are researchers saying about using progress monitoring in writing, particularly that of secondary school English learners (ELs), and what tools are available for monitoring the writing progress of these students? An investigation of the uniqueness of EL writers was conducted prior to designing a systematic literature review for this capstone. An exhaustive search for studies that addressed the research questions was conducted, resulting in three studies that met the reliable and valid criteria established for this literature review. Each of the studies examined the reliability and validity …

A Comparative Analysis Of The Racial And Class Achievement Gap In Schooling In The United States, France, And South Africa, Taylor J. Fulcher

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

This research study focuses on three countries: the United States, France, and South Africa. While the issue of the income and racial achievement gap may seem similar on the surface for these three countries, research suggests that these issues, deeply embedded in each country’s history of racial segregation, economic inequality, and current policies and practices are connected to the struggle of students in acquiring necessary cultural capital. The comparative analysis conducted in this thesis illustrates how schools sort and select students based on racial identity and socioeconomic status, hindering access to cultural capital and affecting student achievement. The outcome of …

Students As Neighbors: Utilizing Dialogue And Deliberation To Manage Town-Gown Tensions, Courtney C. Herb, Lauren A. Holder, Alison L. Steed

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The integration of the university and its students into the broader Harrisonburg community has promoted increased interaction amongst JMU students, JMU faculty and staff, and community members. Navigating this complex relationship can be challenging and, in recent years, this relationship has become increasingly strained. The following research seeks to cultivate processes that aid in its improvement. The research finds that utilizing dialogue and deliberation as an approach to designing public process is a promising approach to mending and maintaining the relationship between JMU students and the broader Harrisonburg community, as well as to addressing town-gown tension at large. The research …

Gladys L. Benerd School Of Education, Diploma And Hooding Ceremony, University Of The Pacific

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Mouth Asymmetries During Infant Babbling: A Brain Lateralization Study, Cecilia Breazile

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Although babbling is both prevalent and important in the process of language development, it could be argued that we still do not understand the basic nature of babbling. To further our understanding of the nature of babbling we attempted to find evidence for brain lateralization typical of adult speech acts during early babbling. This study examined infant mouth asymmetries during babbling sequences in search of evidence that babbling is an inherently linguistic act as indicated by the lateralization of the brain. Previously recorded videos of 12 infants, all 9 months of age, were examined, 29 images were captured, and a …

The Effects Of Narrative Elicitation Task On The Verb Morphological Patterns Of Younger Adolescents With And Without Specific Language Impairment, Megan T. Taliaferro

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Specific language impairment (SLI) is one of the most commonly occurring communication disorders (Castrogiovanni (2008)). SLI is an impairment in the language of children, adolescents and adults who show no other impairment such as mental, emotional or physical problems. Individuals with SLI demonstrate normal intelligence as shown by nonverbal Intelligence Quotient (IQ) scores; however, their language skills appear to be worse than their normally achieving (NA) peers. There has been an issue in identifying individuals with SLI. One factor contributing to the identification issues of SLI is the lack of a clinical marker. Although no clinical marker currently …

Does Vestibular Sensory Stimulation, In The Form Of Slow, Linear Swinging, Change The Modes Of Communication Among Children With Autism?, Katherine A. Gallaher

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

The purpose of this study was to determine if children with autism receiving vestibular sensory stimulation (VSS) in the form of slow, linear swinging, had any change or progression in their modes of communication when compared to children with autism who received a free-play period (nVSS) during speech-language (SL) therapy. Over the course of therapy, each child’s response mode was recorded as a gesture, vocalization, gesture + vocalization, or an utterance, and each mode was a dependent variable (DV) in this study. Participants who received VSS treatment were expected to have a greater improvement on the progression of modes, such …

The Effects Of Tylenol On Non-Social Emotional Memory, Renato Puga

Undergraduate Honors Thesis Collection

The present study proposes utilizing a slide-show presentation analogous to the one employed in Puga, Spelman, and Bohannon (2014). However, a new series of precritical, critical, and post-critical slides will be utilized, counterbalancing perceptuallycentral/peripheral items across all ofthem as well as counterbalancing the pre-critical and post-critical slides. The ultimate goal of this manipulation is twofold: To provide a strong methodological scenario in which (1) the "preceding information effect" found in Puga, Atkinson, and Bohannon (2012) as well as (2) the acetaminophen-post critical effect found in Puga, Spelman and Bohannon (2014) can both be re-tested and solidified.

Indigenous Land Rights Of The Khoi In South Africa, Chelsea Wilkins

Senior Honors Projects, 2010-2019

Upon discussions in classes at James Madison University, I became aware of the Khoi people. I became interested in their way of life, as well as the implications of globalization and industrialization worldwide. After researching the topic, I decided I wanted to not only write my thesis on this topic, but I wanted to travel to South Africa to learn more. I wanted to know how a refreshment station at the Cape for the Dutch East India Company transformed into a fight for land that ultimately led to the extreme disenfranchisement of the Khoi people and their way of life. …

Insights And Characterization Of L1-Norm Based Sparsity Learning Of A Lexicographically Encoded Capacity Vector For The Choquet Integral, Titilope Adeola Adeyeba

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis aims to simultaneously minimize function error and model complexity for data fusion via the Choquet integral (CI). The CI is a generator function, i.e., it is parametric and yields a wealth of aggregation operators based on the specifics of the underlying fuzzy measure. It is often the case that we desire to learn a fusion from data and the goal is to have the smallest possible sum of squared error between the trained model and a set of labels. However, we also desire to learn as “simple’’ of solutions as possible. Herein, L1-norm regularization of a lexicographically encoded …

The Effect Of The Pre-Kindergarten Program On The Reading Achievement Of African American Students, Sebrina R. Palmer

Theses and Dissertations

This study utilized the 2013 language arts data from the Mississippi Curriculum Test II to examine the impact Pre-k has on the reading achievement of low socio-economic African American students. This study was guided by one research question and employed a causal-comparative research design. The research question sought to determine the difference in MCT2 language arts scores of third grade students who participated in a school district’s Pre-k program and those who did not attend the district’s Pre-k program. The results indicated that there was a significant difference in the language arts scores of students who attended Pre-k and those …

Investigation Of Sense Of Place Effects In An Online Learning Environment, Jeanne Lambert Sumrall

Theses and Dissertations

In relation to the constructivist learning theory, understanding what a student may already know in order to use this knowledge as a scaffold for further education is imperative. The online classroom offers a unique and challenging environment for the evaluation of a student’s previous knowledge, especially in the field of geosciences where knowledge may be associated with geographic affiliation. An individual’s geological and meteorological sense of place may play an important role in evaluating a student’s previous knowledge in this field of study. To test this hypothesis, students in an online master’s program were given pre-knowledge surveys to evaluate their …

Transformative Learning Applied To The Development Of Community Capacity In A Local Grassroots Organization, Betty Sue Turner

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation assesses the impact of structural constraints to participation on residents of a rural, non-core county and members of a local grassroots organization in conjunction with the measurement of grassroots members for the presence of transformative learning. This study was motivated by three research questions: (1) To what extent may the presence of structural constraints to participation in community action activities be found in the adult residents of a rural, non-core county? (2) To what extent may the presence of structural constraints to participation in community action activities be found in members of a local grassroots organization? (3) How …

Papua New Guinea: New Approaches To Quantifying Democratic Backslide, Zachary Swain Lyford

Theses and Dissertations

What constitutes a stable democracy has consistently changed over time, with varying thresholds of democratic achievement being utilized. The definitions of a liberal democracy have remained rather broad. This allows for states to be deemed democratic rather easily through weak characteristics. However, while some states clearly begin to exhibit illiberal democratic policies, therefore missing the democratic threshold, they are able to maintain stability. What the precise causal factors to democratic backslide are, have yet to be fully realized. Academics pose a multitude of characteristics contributing to backslide. This thesis seeks to examine two of those factors: ethnic heterogeneity and state …

Effects Of Auditory And Visual Variability On Word Learning In Children: A Pilot Study, Kelly A. Casey

Master's Theses

For infants, acquiring vocabulary for nouns is a dynamic, complex process that involves pairing an auditory token with a visual referent. This process is computationally complex because the acoustic information produced for a verbal production of any given noun varies considerably due to factors including the person who is speaking, speaking rate, and linguistic context. Likewise, visual referents are also variable in characteristics such as size, shape, material, and color. Research suggests that variability in either the auditory or visual domains can facilitate early word learning. However, the role of simultaneous variability in these domains on noun learning remains unexplored. …

A Pilot Study Investigating The Comprehension Of Miranda Rights By Adolescents With Language Impairment, Anne Marie Lieser

Master's Theses

No abstract provided.

Gradient Effects Of Reading Ability On Native And Non-Native Talker Identification, Minal A. Kadam

Master's Theses

The acoustic signal of speech cues information about who is speaking in addition to a talker’s conceptual message. Recent findings indicate that these two aspects of the acoustic signal are fundamentally intertwined in the context of speech perception. For example, listeners demonstrate a native-language advantage for talker identification, which has been interpreted as evidence that phonological knowledge is recruited for talker identification. Converging evidence for this account comes from studies indicating adults with reading disability due to deficits in phonological processing show impaired talker recognition even in their native language. Other studies suggest that the influence of phonological processing on …

A Pilot Study Investigating Comprehension Of Driving Vocabulary In Adolescents With Language Impairment, Jessica M. Pandolfe

Master's Theses

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate if adolescents with LI are at increased risk relative to unimpaired peers at struggling to comprehend driving-related vocabulary found in driving preparation material.

Method: This study included 11 adolescents with LI and 11 adolescent controls with typical language development. Participants completed a self-developed receptive vocabulary measure, the Driving-Related Picture Vocabulary Task, which consisted of simple noun, compound noun, and simple verb driving terminology.

Results: The Driving-Related Picture Vocabulary Task was found to have strong convergent validity with the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test—Fourth Edition (Dunn & Dunn, 2007). Strong positive correlation was …

Effects Of Reading Ability On Lexically-Informed Letter Perception, Alexandra T. Bohner

Master's Theses

Research on perceptual learning for speech shows that lexical information can be used to modify phonological representations. Recent findings suggest that lexically-informed perceptual learning is a domain-general learning mechanism such that lexically-guided learning is also observed in the processing of printed text. The literature on lexically-informed perceptual learning has extensively investigated the nature of the change to the prelexical representation. What this literature has yet to examine, however, is how varying levels of lexical recruitment influence this learning mechanism. Here we examine this question by comparing performance on lexically-guided letter perception between two groups of readers, average readers and advanced …

The Effect Of An Intensive Oral Reading Program On Discourse In Chronic Mild Aphasia, Marilyn Elizabeth Richard

Master's Theses

Background: There is limited research specific to deficits and interventions for people with mild aphasia (PWMA), although they have the greatest potential to return to work. Discourse and reading deficits for this population are well documented and negatively impact quality of life. Two treatment programs have used oral reading to target discourse with mixed success. Neither was designed specifically for PWMA.

Aims: The primary aim of the current study was to examine the effect of an intensive oral reading program on discourse in two participants with chronic mild aphasia. Outcome was also assessed on several other measures including oral reading, …

Curiosity Or Manners: The Values That Shape American Political Mindsets, Ryan Winter

Res Publica - Journal of Undergraduate Research

In the late 1990s, political analyst and linguist George Lakoff proposed an intriguing new way to understand what separates liberals from conservatives in American politics. His theory was based on the premise that there are two opposing frames through which Americans view politics, and that parenting values determine which frame one chooses. Those who adhere to the strict father model hold conservative beliefs on a wide range of issues, while nurturant parents are more liberal. Lakoff's writings have since become widespread and his parenting theory has convinced many political strategists and activists, despite the fact that his hypotheses lacked empirical …

Vietnamese American Experiences Of English Language Learning: Ethnic Acceptance And Prejudice, Jeffrey Labelle

Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement

This article investigates the effects of ethnic acceptance and prejudice on English language learning among immigrant nonnative speakers. During 2004 and 2005, the author conducted participatory dialogues among six Vietnamese and Mexican adult immigrant English language learners. The researcher sought to answer five questions: (1) What are some nonnative English speakers’ experience regarding the way native speakers treat them? (2) How have nonnative English speakers’ experiences of ethnic acceptance or ethnic prejudice affected their learning of English? (3) What do nonnative English speakers think they need in order to lower their anxiety as they learn a new language? (4) What …

Developing Critical Social Justice Literacy In An Online Seminar, Elizabeth Bondy, Elyse Hambacher, Amy S. Murphy, Rachel Wolkenhauer, Desirae Eva Krell

Education

The purpose of this article is to report on an effort to cultivate a critical social justice perspective and critical social justice praxis among educators enrolled in an online graduate program. Although the entire program was organized around themes of equity, collaboration, and leadership, this study focused on educators’ perspectives of the purposes, pedagogy, and outcomes of one course, Critical Pedagogy. Fourteen of the 19 students enrolled in the online course participated in one of six online focus groups following the conclusion of the course. Using constructivist grounded theory methods, the researchers identified the different ways in which students responded …

Manuel Lampon-Paz V. Dept Of Homeland Security

2015 Decisions

USDC for the District of New Jersey

The Early Childhood Educator Preparation Innovation Grant: Lessons From Initial Implementation, Eric J. Lichtenberger, Brenda K. Klostermann, Daniel Q. Duffy

IERC Publications

The main goals of this implementation study were to: a) examine how the grant recipients were implementing the changes set forth in their grant proposals; b) identify initial barriers to implementation of grant activities; c) identify catalysts that aided in goal attainment and/or partnership development; and d) consider the sustainability of the impact of the grant-related activities. Through structured telephone interviews, we solicited a brief description of major activities associated with the grant; catalysts and/or levers enhancing grant activities; barriers inhibiting implementation of grant activities; and successful strategies utilized to overcome barriers. There was also a specific emphasis on articulation …

International Arbitration: Demographics, Precision And Justice, Susan Franck, James Freda, Kellen Lavin, Tobias A. Lehmann, Anne Van Aaken

Contributions to Books

ICCA Congress Series No. 18 comprises the proceedings of the twenty-second Congress of the International Council for Commercial Arbitration (ICCA), held in Miami in 2014. The articles by leading arbitration practitioners and scholars from around the world address the challenges, both perceived and real, to the legitimacy of international arbitration.

The volume focusses on the twin pillars of legitimacy: justice, in procedure and outcome, and precision at every phase of the proceedings. Contributions on justice explore issues related to diversity, fairness and whether arbitral institutions can do more to foster legitimacy – based on the responses of nine international arbitral …

Absolving The Sin: Redemptive Feminine Figures In Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Wife Of Bath's Prologue" And John Milton's Paradise Lost, Rory Griffiths

Theses and Dissertations

Geoffrey Chaucer and John Milton have been ceaselessly studied in isolation to one another, but undergraduate students must begin to study them in conjunction. Chaucer’s “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue” serves as social critique of medieval misogynist practices that allows students to study social practices as they study his language. Milton’s Eve in Paradise Lost reflects the religious and social instability that marked the Interregnum of the English Civil War, allowing Eve to embody the culture’s desire to return to a virtuous Church. Students will learn to examine the space of the authorial paradox, primarily the questions of authority that …

Electrophysiological Correlates Of Speech Perception In Young Children: Associations Among Erp, Nonword Repetition And Language, Vanessa Marie Harwood

Doctoral Dissertations

Event Related Potentials (ERP) recorded during infancy and early childhood have been used to

predict future language outcomes in children. Furthermore, there is recent evidence that

nonword repetition (NWR) can be used to identify language delay in toddlers. This investigation

assesses the relationships among ERP markers of sensitivity to phonemic stimuli, nonword

repetition, and language to determine if the aforementioned methodologies could improve

diagnostic measures for young children. Forty children between the ages of 24 to 48 months

participated in a series of behavioral speech and language measures including the mCDI-2, the

PLS-5, the GFTA-2 and conventional language sampling. ERPs …

Narrative And Horticultural Imperative: Predicting Discourse Ability In Traumatic Brain Injury From Cognitive And Communicative Factors, Karen Le

Doctoral Dissertations

Purpose: The goal of the current research study was to advance our knowledge of cognitive-communicative disorders following traumatic brain injury (TBI) by identifying the cognitive and communicative processes underlying narrative discourse ability. The study 1) examined the role of working memory (WM) and inferencing in narrative discourse, 2) tested key assumptions posited by the Structure Building Framework (SBF; Gernsbacher, 1990), a cognitive model of normative discourse comprehension and 3) attempted to disambiguate the relationship between discourse comprehension and discourse production.

Methods: Forty-four native English speakers participated, comprising 21 individuals with TBI, all with closed-head injuries, and 23 non-brain-injured (NBI) …